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The study guide to ‘Awakenings’ is intended for teachers of Drama, English and Communications Studies. It seeks to open up, for older secondary school students, the subject of disability. It is envisaged that the work set out in the study guide may work as a 6- week module. The guide is arranged as follows: Part 1: Suggestions for work preceding the film. Part 2: Suggestions for work following. In Part 1, through four sessions of work, including role ploy, written work and discussions, students are provided with opportunities for exploring situations which parallel those presented in the film. In Part 2, a similar variety of work is offered, which draws out (and on) students’ reading of the film. INTRODUCTION In the winter of 1916-1917, an epidemic of a rare disease occurred, springing up, as virus diseases sometimes do, seemingly out of nowhere. It spread over Europe and then to other parts of the world and affected some five million people. The onset of the disease was sudden and took different forms. Some people developed acute restlessness or insomnia or dementia. Others fell into a trance-like sleep or coma. These different forms were recognised and identified by the physician Constantin von Economo as one disease, which he called encephalitis lethargica, or sleepy sickness. Many people died of the disease. Of those who survived, some recovered completely. The majority remained partly disabled, prone to symptoms reminiscent of Parkinson’s disease. The worst affected sank into a kind of ‘sleep’, unable to move or speak, without any will of their own, or hope, but conscious and with their memories intact. They were placed in hospitals or asylums. Ten years after the epidemic had begun, it just as remarkably disappeared. Fifty years later, the epidemic had been forgotten. In 1966, when Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist trained in London, took up his post at Mount Carmel, a hospital in New York, he found there a group of eighty people who were the forgotten survivors of the forgotten epidemic. It was clear that hundreds of thousands had died in institutions. Dr. Sacks called them ‘the lepers of the present century’. In his book, ‘Awakenings’, he tells of his attempts to understand the nature of their affliction, but also of his growing appreciation of them as individuals, with their own unique histories and experience. In 1969, Dr. Sacks tried out a remarkable new drug, L-DOPA. For some of his patients, there then followed a rapid and brief return to something like normality. They were suddenly restored to the world of the late nineteen sixties. His book documents this remarkable awakening, as experienced by twenty of his patients. L-DOPA was not, however, the magic cure that it first seemed. The normality that it promoted soon broke down, with patients subject to all kinds of bizarre behaviours. In the film of ‘Awakenings’, Robert de Niro plays Leonard Lowe, someone affected by sleepy sickness as a young man. He is in a state of near sleep, unable to move or speak. Every day, his mother comes into hospital to care for him, as she has for many years. Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, the neurologist who, like Dr. Sacks himself in 1 966, takes up a post at a New York hospital, discovering there the forgotten survivors of the sleepy sickness epidemic. He finds himself drawn to this group of chronically disabled people, and especially to Leonard. Robert de Niro’s Leonard is based on the Leonard L. who Sacks describes in his book - an intelligent and courageous man with a wry sense of humour, who is able only to communicate in a very limited way, using a letter board. Sacks says how thoroughly De Niro prepared himself for his role, spending a great deal of time with post-encephalitic patients in an effort to understand something of how it feels to be so chronically disabled, and to represent as accurately as possible the quality of if disablement. In the film, we are shown Leonard’s awakening under L-DOPA. Leonard sees the world to which he has awoken truly wonderful. He has lost many years of his life. Now he wants to live. He wants his independence. Briefly, see him determined to achieve this before his damaged nervous system pulls him back into psychosis. In the book ‘Awakenings’, Dr. Sacks writes that Leonard says to him after the last futile trial of another drug: “Now I accept the whole situation. It was wonderful, terrible, dramatic and comic. It is finally - sad, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve learned a great deal in the last three years. I’ve broken through barriers which I had all life. And now, I’ll stay myself and you can keep your L-DOPA.” A note about sleepy sickness: Encephalitis lethargica (sleepy sickness, or sleeping sickness, as it is called in the U.S.A.) is caused by a virus attacks the brain. In particular, it attacks a part of the mid-brain - the substantia nigra - damaging the nerve cells this area and severely reducing their ability to produce the chemical nerve impulse transmitter, dopamine. In respect, the disease is similar to Parkinson’s disease. The cerebral cortex (the part of the brain concerned with conscious awareness, thought and memory) is unaffected. When in the early 1960’s a substance (L- DOPA) closely related to dopamine was found to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, there was the hope that it would do the same for post-encephalitic patients, that is, people suffering from the after-effects of sleepy sickness. In event, the effect of L-DOPA on such people was variable and unpredictable. For some, except for a brief return something close to normality, it was a failure. For others, its effects were beneficial over a longer period, and for a few, there was a return to a long lasting near normality. The drug raised enormous expectations in those who been worst affected by sleepy sickness, who for thirty or forty years had been in a kind of catatonic sleep. Tragically, for some of them, their awakening was all too brief. PART 1 SESSION ONE Rilke‘s poem ‘The Panther’ is suggested as an indirect approach to the subject matter of ‘Awakenings’. The poem below may be photocopied so that students can follow the teacher’s reading, or read the poem themselves. THE PANTHER In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a centre in which a mighty will stands paralysed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly -. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-2926) DISCUSSION POINTS 1 What kind of animal is a panther? 2 How does the poet suggest that the panther has come to see its world? 3 What might be the sort of images that might plunge into the panther’s heart? 4 What does the poet suggest the panther feels? Anger? Resignation? Nothing? 5 Could you imagine a situation in which you might feel as the panther does? What kind of situation would you have to be in? Teacher: I would like you to think about the situation of someone who is paralysed, unable to move or speak, but able to see, hear and smell, and fully conscious of what is happening around them. What kind of images might ‘rush down into the heart’ of such a person, as into the heart of the panther? One way of helping students to explore their suggested ‘images’ is by asking them to make them more concrete by enacting them in a limited drama form. As follows: DRAMA TASK 1 Work in small groups. Choose one of the images you have suggested and discuss how you might present it. What you present must be very brief. No longer than I minute. No more than 1 0 words - fewer if possible. Students will need some time to work on their images. Each image should then be presented to the rest of the class. Evaluating the images: This could be quite an open evaluation, with students’ comments and observations invited. It might lead to students trying out different images or to experimenting with ways of making the ones they presented more telling. OPTIONAL TASK As someone paralysed and unable to speak, record on cassette or in writing, your internal voice, expressing your thoughts and feelings about one of the images you have enacted, that ‘plunges into the heart and is gone SESSION TWO This session could start with any recordings or writing from Session One, or directly, with the following: Introducing the extract: In the 1920s there was an epidemic of a disease called sleepy sickness. It occurred in many parts of the world. Many people died. Of those who recovered, the worst affected lost the ability to move or to speak. I am going to read you an extract from a book about these people. In the 1920s, the hospital in New York which took in many of these patients was called Mount Carmel Hospital for the Crippled and Dying. Excerpt from ‘Awakenings’: ‘In 1966, when I first went to Mount Carmel, there were still some... eighty post-encephalitic patients there..